Project Preview

Blue Cathedral by Jennifer Higdon is an orchestra piece that attempts to tell the story of Jennifer Higdon’s brother, Andrew Blue, who passed away from cancer at age 33. In my presentation I will explain how the music itself does this, but in this post I am going to explain how this piece inspired my band and how we interpreted it.

The story is a story of a brother and sister, so our performance included lots of pairing. The sister played the flute and the brother the clarinet so these two instruments are featured. The brother died at 33, so there are 33 formations hidden in our drill. The transparency of death is symbolized through the windows in a cathedral. The window in the cathedral in Higdon’s mind is a view into heaven, so when looking out of the transparent window, you see stain glass and trees. The color guard used transparent flags and “tree flags” to show this. Also, the band forms a lot of open formations to symbolize this transition into heaven. Finally, her brother’s middle name and favorite color was Blue, so only the color blue is used. Orange also appears, but in hope of highlighting blue since it is opposite blue on the color wheel.

If you are interested, here is a link to my band's midseason performance.